The present invention relates to a device for automatically supplying reels to an operating machine. In particular, the present invention relates to a device particularly adapted to be used for supplying reels of paper to a cigarette-making machine, but which is advantageously usuable on any other type of operating machine which uses web material which can be wound into reels.
In the above mentioned operating machine, and in particular, in cigarette-making machines, which latter will be discussed below by way of example only and without loss of generality, the strip of paper forming the outer casing of the cigarettes is drawn from a reel which, given the high productive capacity of the said cigarette-making machines, is used up in a relatively short time and must be replaced relatively often with a new reel. The replacement operation mentioned above can, if effected by hand, be heavy and difficult for the operators who have to perform it; consequently, several proposals have been made for performing this operation automatically.
For example, a first known reel supply device has a reel, disposed in a working or unwinding position keyed to a vertical spindle, the said unwinding spindle, above which there is a stack of horizontal reserve reels which are coaxial therewith.
In the known supply device described above, the replacement of an empty reel with a new reel takes place in an automatic manner by means of axially sliding the lower reel of the said stack and coupling it with the said unwinding spindle.
The known supply device described above has a number of disadvantages the main one of which is constituted by the fact that the reserve reels, being disposed coaxial to the said unwinding spindle and above this, constitute an overall encumbrance which reduces drastically the accessibility of the lower members of the supply device itself.
In the second place, the known supply device described above normally requires the use of an auxiliary deflector unit, seeing that the web is disposed on edge at the output, with respect to a horizontal plane, and must normally be turned through 90.degree. before it can be used.
A further known supply device includes a supply of reels in which the reels are disposed on edge alongside one another on a horizontal conveyor.
The reels are taken up individually and in succession from the said supply by means of a pusher, the action of which makes each reel roll along an inclined plane at the lower end of which each reel is stopped in a position coaxial to a support pin.
This latter, by displacing axially, engages the said reel and conveys it to an unwinding position.
A solution of this type elininates the disadvantages of the first known supply device described above in that it allows a reserve of reels to be gathered at a convenient distance from the unwinding position, that is to say in a position in which they do not in any way limit the accessability to the members of the supply device itself. However, this other known supply device described above is not free from disadvantages in that the path of the reels along the said inclined plane is substantially uncontrolled.